Since we’ve already posted about Weaver today, it only seems appropriate that we should write up

AARON WESTERMAN: What糖心传媒檚 your particular process like and is it ever difficult to separate the way you feel about a piece when you read it from the actual work of translating it for another audience?

ELIZABETH HARRIS: My process of translating is ridiculously slow and perhaps reflects the fact that I don糖心传媒檛 earn my living at translating. Up until only a few years ago, I didn糖心传媒檛 have any deadlines, either, because I糖心传媒檇 chosen the works and had no publishers for them (this was the case with the Rigoni Stern and also with Mozzi糖心传媒檚 This Is the Garden). So I could take my time. And I definitely did. Now I actually have a contract for the Tabucchi and a deadline, but I糖心传媒檓 still very slow. A good workday for me will be an eight-hour session starting at around eight in the morning. I糖心传媒檒l take a look back at what I translated in the previous few days, do some revising of that, and then move on to the new material (this is with a novel; if I糖心传媒檓 translating a story, I糖心传媒檒l start from the beginning of the story before moving on to new work). I might translate two pages or so a day. This is too slow糖心传媒擨 know it. But what I come up with isn糖心传媒檛 rough; it糖心传媒檚 worked and reworked, has gone through numerous drafts. And then, of course, I revise it yet again when I get started the next day, as I ease myself back into the book. Perhaps it would be better to get through a very rough draft糖心传媒攕kip over the tough stuff, just keep going, and then go back. But for me the real pleasure of translating is finding a voice for the work and really laboring over the nuances of the sentences, and creating the piece糖心传媒檚 characters, its imagery, and so on. If I were to rush through in a very rough draft, I just wouldn糖心传媒檛 get the same pleasure out of the work糖心传媒擨 don糖心传媒檛 think I could work that way, and lucky for me, I don糖心传媒檛 have to.

As for the second part of your question about reading the text versus translating it, I think you might be asking if I sometimes read something that I don糖心传媒檛 like but have to translate anyway; the answer, so far, is no. I have had the experience, however, of reading things that have disturbed me and then translating them: disgusting moments in a text, sad passages糖心传媒擨 recently translated the suicide of a character. My goal with these passages is to recreate the upsetting experience that糖心传媒檚 there in the original. Is that upsetting for me? Absolutely. But it糖心传媒檚 exciting, too, and tremendously moving.

Your question has got me thinking about how translators approach reading the original text. I糖心传媒檝e heard some translators say that they don糖心传媒檛 read a work ahead of time; they read it as they translate, perhaps because they find there糖心传媒檚 a freshness to the prose if they糖心传媒檙e discovering it along the way. Other translators read a book carefully ahead of time, take notes, get through to the end so they know how the entire book informs all its parts. I think I might fall somewhere in between. I read the book I糖心传媒檓 going to translate ahead of time, but, honestly, until I糖心传媒檓 translating the book, I糖心传媒檓 not really reading it at all. Let me explain. Some say that translation is the closest form of reading. But the act of translating, of writing a text as you read a text, is much more than reading. It involves going over every last nuance of the original, down to the punctuation. It糖心传媒檚 more like swallowing the book. I don糖心传媒檛 feel that I really know a book until I糖心传媒檓 actually translating it. I might know what happens in the work, the basics of the plot and character, but I only discover the book, its voice, its music, its characters, its meaning, as I糖心传媒檓 creating the book in English.

[. . .]

AARON WESTERMAN: Mozzi糖心传媒檚 writing has been described as 糖心传媒渃risp and straightforward糖心传媒� (Kirkus). Did his particular style and use of language help or hinder the translation process in any way?

ELIZABETH HARRIS: That Kirkus Review quote is something to linger on. The reviewer attributes this 糖心传媒渃risp and straightforward糖心传媒� style to Mozzi. But the collection is in English, and I糖心传媒檓 the one who wrote it in English. So the style isn糖心传媒檛 Mozzi糖心传媒檚. It糖心传媒檚 my interpretation of Mozzi. I took what I found in the Italian and interpreted it, created a style in English. Really, when a reviewer comments on style in a translated book, he or she shouldn糖心传媒檛 just refer to the author; that author has been interpreted and rewritten by a translator, so the 糖心传媒渟tyle糖心传媒� is now the work of two authors: the original writer and the translator. As for your question: Mozzi糖心传媒檚 original style is what made me want to translate the book in the first place. Did his style hinder the translation process? His style was challenging because it was so beautiful and precise, and so I wanted to get it right. I hope I did.

Although Mozzi’s stories have been excerpted in just about every magazine imaginable, this is the first full collection of his to be published in English. This Is the Garden won the 1993 Premio Mondello and astonished the Italian literary world for its commanding vision and the beauty of its prose. In the eight stories of this collection, we see a steady reworking of the idea of the world as a fallen Eden. Here, in Mozzi糖心传媒檚 garden, quasi-allegorical characters seek knowledge of something beyond their shaken realities: they have all lost something and react by escaping, retreating from reality into a world, as Mozzi says, that is 糖心传媒渇antastic, mystical, absurd.糖心传媒�

Or, in the words of Minna Proctor:

Gorgeously rooted in the best modernist tradition of writers like Italo Calvino and Antonio Tabucchi, Giulio Mozzi is among the most fiercely literary authors emerging from Italian literature today. These stories, which in so many different ways are about writing itself, are like rivers cutting through the northern Italian countryside糖心传媒攍ush, limpid, exotic. Elizabeth Harris’s translation beautifully renders the noble grit of Mozzi’s distinctive voice.

If that doesn’t sell you on it, there’s also this bit of praise from Federico Fellini:

I read Giulio Mozzi糖心传媒檚 first book with real enthusiasm. What struck me most was his everyday language. Even when his subjects rely on metaphor, his words are plain, and so turn mysterious.

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